


A Tight-Knit Family Dinner

by benfic



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Feel free to read if not Jewish/observant! It should still be comprehensible, It's... what it sounds like, Jewish Holidays, Multi, Shabbat | Sabbath | Sabt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 12:50:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15195161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benfic/pseuds/benfic
Summary: Whizzer’s first impression when Marvin starts going out and returning with strange things is that this is probably another way in which Marvin has changed in the last two years, and he’s not going to complain about it if he gets to keep splitting chores with him. So Marvin hoards candles (mumbling about wick numbers as he shoves them into free cupboards) and weird cups now. Okay. Whizzer can put up with that...Marvin, Whizzer, and Jason attempt an old Jewish tradition with fairly little success. At least the results are funny... I've been waiting to do this since I connected the dots about Shabbat and Marvin having Jason "on the weekends; just on the weekends".(Less Mature and more PG-13.)





	A Tight-Knit Family Dinner

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to check out the explanation to more complicated things mentioned [HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15195131)! Otherwise, read on and you'll understand as much as Whizzer anyway; the explanation is totally optional and just there for those who want to learn more.

Whizzer’s first impression when Marvin starts going out and returning with strange things is that this is probably another way in which Marvin has changed in the last two years, and he’s not going to complain about it if he gets to keep splitting chores with him. So Marvin hoards candles (mumbling about wick numbers as he shoves them into free cupboards) and weird cups now. Okay. Whizzer can put up with that.

 

It’s only when Marvin tells  _ him  _ to go get changed that Whizzer decides to put a stop to things. His first move is to tell Marvin that nobody gets to act high and mighty over fashion in  _ that  _ tie, and Marvin’s reaction is to shove Whizzer into their bedroom and grumble something about  _ just make yourself presentable,  _ which, again, doesn’t make sense with that tie!

 

“Are we going somewhere?” Whizzer yells through the door. Marvin either drops something or knocks something over, then curses about it.

 

“We’re having  _ dinner,  _ Whizzer, now get--”

 

_ “What?”  _ Whizzer asks, opening the door. Marvin handily re-bundles him into the room and shuts the door again.

 

“Get changed,” he says, and Whizzer does (for his own safety). He also runs through possibilities in his head, and admittedly lingers too long over ideas like  _ he’s definitely just going crazy again  _ and  _ this is because i taught him poker, right?  _ In the end, he does circle around to the fact that it’s Friday and Jason will be coming over, but what that has to do with formal dinners he has no idea. Jason’s birthday is circled carefully on the calendar, and it’s nowhere near now (thank God), so the mystery stands. He pokes his head out of the bedroom.

 

“This alright?” he asks, not wearing a suit jacket because he won’t wear a suit jacket without a cause. Marvin sort of nods and goes back to arranging tea candles on a tiny sheet of aluminum foil in a panic. “Marv?”

 

_ “Don’t  _ call me that,” Marvin says, and Whizzer feels slightly better, but Marvin continues fiddling with the candles for several more minutes before going rummaging through the junk drawer for something else.

 

“Marvin--”

 

“Yes?” Marvin asks, getting out matches.

 

“What’s  _ happening?”  _ Whizzer asks, just as the doorbell rings.

 

“Jason!” Marvin runs to the door, and Whizzer gathers himself. He’s getting too old for this kind of stress. 

 

“Hi, Dad.” Jason is removing all manner of outer layers when Whizzer arrives, and underneath it all he has a fun little tie over a white shirt. “Is Whizzer-- Whizzer!”

 

“Evening, Jason,” Whizzer says, feeling more confused than ever. “Are you gonna tell me what the occasion is?”

 

“It’s  _ Shabbat,”  _ Marvin says, looking at Whizzer like this should have been obvious from the get-go. Sometimes it feels like Marvin expects everything to be obvious from the get-go, though possibly less so now.

 

“My dad agreed to do Shabbos this week,” Jason explains, handing Whizzer a very small white box. “I made challah with my mom.”

 

“You made...” Okay, Whizzer knows what challah is. It’s bread, right? It’s bread. And this bread looks pretty bread-like, even if it is a little burned at the edges. “Oh, this is... very nice, Jason!” 

 

“It’s braided,” Marvin notes over Whizzer’s shoulder; Whizzer jumps.

 

“Mom did that part,” Jason admits. “Anyway, the challah goes on the table first. We’re supposed to cover it.”

 

“Right!” Marvin grabs the box back from Whizzer and carefully replaces the cover, putting it down on the table.

 

“I think you’re supposed to put a cloth over it,” Jason says, and Marvin pales. Whizzer, for his part, still feels markedly out of his element, but he did this at his grandparents’ house once when he was too little to really be a disappointment to the family, so he can probably figure this bit out.

 

“Can you use anything?” he asks.

 

“I mean, it has to cover the challah all the way. I guess you could use a pillowcase,” Jason says, and Marvin dashes back into the bedroom.

 

“Get a fresh one!” Whizzer yells, and Marvin dashes back out of the bedroom. “God.” He looks down at Jason, who seems impressively alright with all of this. Whizzer supposes Jason’s seen worse, though that doesn’t exactly make him feel better. “So, uh, why do we cover the challah, Jason?”

 

Marvin returns, pillowcase in hand, and drapes it over the challah-box. It hangs over onto the dishes nearest it, so he tucks in all of the corners, frowning.

 

“‘Cause it’s shy,” Jason says, authoritatively. “It’s not supposed to know that we’re drinking the wine first.”

 

“Right,” says Whizzer, who is pretty sure everyone’s just speaking Latin now.

 

“I have cups,” Marvin says. “Many cups.” And he starts removing all those fancy cups he bought somewhere in the realm of the past week, standing them up on the counter.

 

“Wow...” Jason picks up one, then another, sort of feeling his way through them. Marvin seems, at the very least, somewhat satisfied with this endeavor. Whizzer thinks he can understand that. “I like this one,” Jason says eventually, holding up a cup with a repeating design of stone buildings around the edge. Whizzer squints; it has Hebrew on it, though Whizzer can’t read anything that lacks vowels or employs a letter beyond  _ vav  _ because that’s all he remembers of the alphabet song.

 

“Perfect,” Marvin says, and sweeps everything else back into the drinking-utensils cupboard, which is  _ already overfull how many times has Whizzer asked him not to bring home any more damn MUGS? _

 

“And we’re late to lighting candles, Dad!” Jason rushes over to the candles in question, which are spread, like a school of fish, rather claustrophobically near each other. Jason pokes two of them out of the way and eyes the matches. “The woman of the house is supposed to light them.”

 

Whizzer looks at Jason, who looks at Marvin, who looks at Whizzer.

 

“What?” Whizzer asks, and Marvin squints at him. “Absolutely not.”

 

“Well,  _ I’m  _ not--”

 

_ “I’ll  _ light the candles,” Jason says. “For Mom.”

 

And he takes the little matches out of their box and lights three tea candles-- “some people say you’re supposed to light an extra one for a husband, and then another one each for all the children,” he says, to which Marvin begins to reply something about having to light one for Whizzer, then, since  _ OW why is your elbow so SHARP--  _ waves his hands over them very illustriously, and says a blessing.

 

“Amen,” Marvin says, elbowing Whizzer back, so Whizzer’s response comes out a bit strangled.

 

“And  _ now  _ we do all the songs,” Jason says. “Here, I found benchers.”

 

Whizzer is still trying to figure out what a bencher is (baseball term?) when Jason hands him a very small booklet.

 

“S _ halom Aleichem  _ is on page four,” Jason says helpfully, flipping to the page in his own booklet. “They have it transliterated, Dad.”

 

Marvin flips frantically through his own bencher, and Whizzer takes a moment to read the text on his. It’s half in Hebrew, half transliterated, and at the very end there’s a neat little paragraph in English translating the whole thing.

 

_ Welcome, ministering angels, messengers of the Most High... _

 

“Oh, hey,” Whizzer says, glancing through the Hebrew. “I know this. I think.”

 

Marvin goggles at him, but once Jason’s got to the right page for him he seems more confident in himself.

 

“This is that thing they do at Hecht’s house,” he says. Whizzer doesn’t know who or what Hecht is, but he figures this means they can’t be so bad at this.

 

They all launch into it, but only Jason and Whizzer are on the right tune; Marvin seems to be trying to accomplish something closer to a funeral dirge. They all stop, and Marvin looks into Whizzer’s bencher. 

 

“That’s the wrong tune,” he says.

 

“If we use the slow one, it’ll take all night,” Jason protests. Marvin looks at him, sighs, and gestures in a vague sort of onwards motion. Whizzer lets Jason start, then joins in, and Marvin takes a moment seemingly to acclimate himself before entering the tune as well, at which point they have to figure out how many times they’ll repeat each verse (Three times, Jason says, so they do it three times, with somewhat rising intensity) and how to end the whole thing off (weakly). Jason adds a brief explanation of how they’re inviting the Shabbos Angels (Whizzer doesn’t understand this bit at all) to eat with them, and if they’re happy with the table, then they’ll bless them so that it’ll be just as good next week.

 

“I hope they like burned fish,” Marvin mutters, and Jason frowns up at him.

 

“Now we do  _ Mizmor L’David,”  _ he says. “It’s a song about being happy and religious.”

 

“Then I think I can opt out of it,” Marvin says, but Jason grabs his bencher and forcibly flips it to the correct page. He steals Whizzer’s, too, and ends up singing by himself, since neither Marvin nor Whizzer can figure out the tune and Whizzer’s not sure he’s ever heard of this to begin with.

 

_ A Psalm of David. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want...  _ Whizzer reads through the text silently, matching occasional words in Hebrew to the English. It’s something vaguely laudatory and a bit hippie-esque; Mendel might approve. _ Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life...  _ He can practically hear Mendel singing in the background.

 

“Now you have to do  _ Eishes Chayil,”  _ Jason says, and Marvin blinks.

 

“What is that, repentance?”

 

“It’s a  _ song,”  _ Jason says. “Here, I’ll help you.” He flips the page in Marvin’s bencher, mouthing  _ page nine  _ to Whizzer. 

 

_ EISHES CHAYIL: A WOMAN OF VALOR _

 

“Uh-huh,” Whizzer says, scanning the translated lyrics.  _ A woman of valor, who can find? Far beyond pearls is her value. Her husband's heart trusts in her and he shall lack no fortune...  _ It’ll be a miracle if Jason can actually get Marvin to sing this. 

 

And apparently God’s feeling miraculous tonight, because Jason  _ does  _ get Marvin to sing it-- slowly, with the transliteration about as close to his face as it can get, but Jason gives him the tune very gently and he figures out the rest himself. Whizzer claps politely for the both of them when they finish, and Jason bows from his perch atop Marvin’s chair.

 

“Then you bless me,” Jason says, and Marvin admits he understands this part, so he holds the bencher with his left hand and puts his right on Jason’s.

 

_ “Y'simcha Elohim k'Ephrayim v'chi Menasheh. Y'varechecha Adonai V'yish'm'recha. Ya'er Adonai panav eilecha vichuneka. Yisa Adonai panav eilecha v'yasem l'cha shalom.” _

 

_ May God make you like Ephraim and Menasheh. May the Lord bless you and watch over you. May the Lord cause His countenance to shine to you and favor you. May the Lord raise His countenance toward you and grant you peace. _

 

Whizzer reads ahead into the blessing for daughters, which is much the same near the end but different towards the beginning.

 

“Why different blessings for boys and girls?” he asks, and Marvin gives him that  _ don’t bring up politics now if you want sex later  _ look, so Whizzer shoots back the  _ I’m just asking a QUESTION  _ look, and Marvin rolls his eyes in addition to giving Whizzer the  _ well fine but if you try to stick your tongue anywhere you know what that’ll get you  _ look _ ,  _ and Whizzer responds with  _ fine!,  _ to which Marvin responds  _ FINE.  _ And Jason is saying something about how guys don’t have the same problems that girls do, and  _ his  _ look is really that of  _ I’m going through puberty right now and I know more than anybody in this room. _

 

“Okay,” Whizzer says. 

 

“Ask me why they’re not the forefathers,” Jason says, grinning like a kitten.

 

“Huh?” Whizzer asks, while Marvin inspects the bencher.

 

“Oh, yeah,” he says. Whizzer can’t tell what he’s seeing.

 

“The girls one is most of the foremothers, but none of the forefathers are in the one for guys,” Jason explains, pointing, and Whizzer does remember something about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, so he lets Jason go on with, “Ephraim and Menashe are the first brothers in the Torah who don’t fight.”

 

“Hm,” Marvin says, examining his bencher. Whizzer examines his, too, but the text doesn’t seem to change.

 

“Now it’s time for the actual kiddush,” says Jason, and Marvin says “Right,” and Jason helps everyone get to the right page (number twelve). “Dad, you have to fill your cup with wine. All the way to the top.”

 

_ “That  _ I can do,” Marvin agrees, but according to Jason he hasn’t filled it  _ all the way,  _ so there’s a pause in which Jason pointedly overfills it and Marvin sends a sad glance towards the puddle on his plate.

 

“This part you say under your breath,” Jason says, pointing, “and after that everything is out loud. And you pause here for us to say ‘amen’.”

 

“Okay,” Marvin says, and takes a breath.

 

_ (And it was evening and it was morning...) _

 

_ The sixth day. _

 

Marvin makes it through about a paragraph alright, then jumps when Jason shouts, “l’chaim!” Marvin stares at Jason, who nods.

 

“You keep going,” he says, but Marvin loses his place, so Whizzer says  _ “v’rabanan v’rabotai,”  _ which makes Marvin jump again. Then he looks back into his book.

 

“It says _ ‘v’rabosai’,” _ he says.

 

“If you come from Russia,” Whizzer says, at the same time as Jason says, “if you’re Ashkenazi.”

 

“I’m gay,” Marvin says, and Whizzer walks over and whaps him with the bencher.

 

Jason gasps; “Don’t  _ do  _ that, Whizzer! It’s holy!”

 

“Sorry,” Whizzer says, looking at the bencher sideways. “And maybe I  _ will  _ take over.”

 

“Fine,” Marvin says, and Whizzer sticks out his tongue.

 

“I don’t know if that’s allowed,” Jason says, frantically flipping through his bencher. “Um, and you don’t say ‘v’rabanan v’rabotai’ if you don’t have teachers present. But-- if you want to--”

 

“Great,” Whizzer says, not really feeling confident but knowing something like enough to carry this off. _“Savri maranan--”_ he pauses for Jason to jump in with his little _“l’chaim!”_ Then comes the blessing, and everyone says _Amen_ , and then there’s another blessing, except Jason says there’s no _Amen_ yet, and then Whizzer tries to get through the rest but Jason insists that this part has a tune, which he sings very sweetly, and then Whizzer rounds everything off with the final blessing and there are _Amen_ s all around and Whizzer collapses into a chair.

 

“Heavy stuff,” Jason says, and Whizzer nods. Marvin is busy looking at Whizzer like he’s been winning at chess, except possibly with more confusion and less resentment.

 

“How did you  _ do--” _

 

“I’m half Jewish,” Whizzer says, as snottily as possible, and Marvin rolls his eyes. “Also, I think I mispronounced something.”

 

“You did,” Jason says, “but it’s okay. And now we wash our hands.”

 

“My hands are clean,” Marvin says, and Whizzer is about to give him another one of those Hygiene Talks when Jason explains that they’re not washing to get  _ clean,  _ it’s washing before  _ bread.  _ Then he gets up and disappears into his suitcase, reappearing with a large, oddly-shaped cup.

 

“Oh!” Marvin says, and even Whizzer thinks it looks familiar.

 

“It’s a washing cup,” Jason says. “There’s a more religious word for it, but I can’t remember because it’s Yiddish.”

 

“That’s okay,” Whizzer says, watching Jason lean himself into the sink to fill the cup. “Hey, Jason--”

 

“I can  _ do  _ it,” Jason protests, and he does sort of manage to do it, only he also slops a lot of water over the edge of the cup and into the sink, which means he has to refill before splashing it over his hands: three times on the right, three times on the left. Then he gets off the stool and heads silently to his seat, where he picks up his bencher and says a blessing. Whizzer stares at him, and he stares back.

 

“What?” Whizzer asks, and he points. “What, you can’t-- oh, we’re not talking. Got it.”

 

This seems vaguely cultish, but Marvin seems happy enough to swerve in front of the sink and wash whatever needs to be washed. Jason hurries over with the bencher, which Marvin squints into. Whizzer, for his part, remembers at least the first half of the blessing, and they all return to their seats quietly.

 

There is much shifting around and adjusting of clothes. Everyone looks at Jason, who makes hand signals towards the bencher and then the challah. Marvin points at his bencher. Jason nods. Marvin lifts his bencher-- Jason nods at that, too. Marvin squints into it, and Jason sighs and gets up to uncover the challah and lift it up. He says the entire blessing, everyone says  _ Amen,  _ and Jason rips off a very small piece of challah and eats it.

 

“Now what?” Whizzer says, and Jason makes the Racquetball-Shaped Eyes at him.

 

“You don’t talk until you  _ eat!”  _ he says, and Whizzer takes a small piece of challah for himself and apologizes.

 

_ “Now  _ what?”

 

“Jason, this is very good,” Marvin says, crunching on a slightly burned piece of challah. Jason shines slightly. Whizzer takes another piece of challah and munches on it, waiting.

 

“Now we eat,” Jason says, having apparently decided that an appropriate amount of time has passed. Marvin nods and promptly offers everyone salad, which Whizzer accepts but picks the raisins  _ (??????????)  _ out of. Mostly he’s surprised that Marvin has managed to create a dinner of this scale and wants to encourage him, even if that means eating cabbage salad that tastes like it’s been drowned twice. 

 

There’s fish, too-- even if some of it is burned and has bones, which is Whizzer’s limit for food. He’ll eat mayonnaise, he’ll eat broccoli, he’ll drink Marvin’s terrible sour beer, but if he’s going to eat dead animals, he had better be able to ignore the fact that they’re dead animals. At least there’s gefilte fish, which Whizzer enjoys partially because There’s No Such Thing As A Gefilte Fish, which is something Marvin revels in explaining at the dinner parties that Whizzer really needs to stop bringing him to.

 

“How did you get these, Jason?” Whizzer asks, pointedly ignoring Marvin’s offer for him to try some of the chicken, which has been drenched in seasoning and looks like it’s going for a swim. “Hold on, Marv.”

 

_ “Don’t--” _

 

“My teacher,” Jason says. “And the other kids at school. A lot of them had too many. We had a mock Shabbos.”

 

“Uh-huh,” Whizzer says, looking at the front of his bencher. Swirling text over some Jewish-looking boxes reads  _ Elijah Joseph Goldberg’s Bar Mitzvah...  _ “Marvin, are you planning on ordering these things?”

 

“Hm?” Marvin stops chewing on whatever he’s chewing on and looks over. “Oh, God.”

 

“Shabbat is a day of rest, Whizzer,” Jason reminds him.

 

“Okay! Sorry.” Whizzer looks at his plate. “I could not eat another bite.”

 

“Then you say the blessing after a meal,” Jason says, and Whizzer opens to the proper page only to find that the blessing takes up a good ten pages. What he wants very much is to tell Jason that he can’t logically make Whizzer do this, or perhaps to fake-read, but...

 

“Do you want more chicken  _ soup?”  _ Marvin asks for the third time, and Whizzer starts reading.

 

_ A Song of Ascents. When the Lord brought Zion out of captivity, we were like people in a dream... _

 

When Whizzer finds the bit that says  _ when three or more men have eaten together...  _ he points it out to Jason, but Jason says it’s okay because he’s not technically a man yet, so Whizzer nods and keeps going. He omits that part, omits the part about his father being present because how long has it been since  _ that  _ guy’s been in the picture?, and then he hits:

 

_ if he is a guest at someone else’s table he adds... _

 

Whizzer looks at the page. He glances over to Jason, who is still trying to get through what Marvin calls the potatoes. He thinks.  _ Guest at someone else’s table?  _ To be fair, they’re not  _ together  _ together yet, they’re only practicing. It’s only a test run. Whizzer still has a while to go home. Wherever that is.

 

But he looks up, and he catches Marvin’s eye.

 

_ What’s wrong? _

 

Whizzer grins, shakes his head. He looks back down and decides to leave that part out, too.

 

Jason and Marvin fade into the background for a bit after that; at some point Jason admits they could’ve done this as a group, but he doesn’t know most of the tunes, so Whizzer keeps going at his own pace, and Marvin and Jason silently join in eventually, Jason clearly mouthing out every syllable in perfect Hebrew. Whizzer scoots his chair one inch, then another, then another closer to Marvin.

 

_ the following blessings are added according to the individual circumstances. _

 

_ for one’s parents-- _

 

Whizzer skips that part.

 

_ for oneself and one’s own family: _

 

Whizzer reads the text and flushes slightly.

 

_ me, my wife (my husband), together with everything that is mine... _

 

What, back to this?

 

_ me,  _ he reads.  _ my...  _ he looks up...  _ marvin... together with everything that is mine, _

 

and after that it is mostly easy and he manages to even read a significant amount of the final blessing in transliterated Hebrew, and then he sits back and rests his head against the back of his chair. Marvin’s hand slips over his own, and he squeezes it.

 

Then he looks through the rest of the book. There are different types of kiddush, for different occasions, and also blessings for after snacks, and also blessings after a wedding meal, and then something that says  _ Blessings for All Occasions  _ which is practically begging for Whizzer to look at it.

 

It opens with blessings over food, which Whizzer understands. There’s a blessing for going to the bathroom, which he didn’t know about and feels like he should have. There’s a whole set of  _ Blessings for Witnessing or Experiencing,  _ and those get interesting-- there’s a blessing for seeing lightning, rainbows, oceans, trees blossoming... 

 

“Hey, Jason,” he says, because Jason seems to be waiting for him to finish. “There’s a blessing for seeing beautiful people.”

 

“Yeah,” Jason says. “Like Julie Johnson.”

 

Marvin looks up. “That doesn’t sound like a Jewish name.”

 

“It’s a day of rest,” Jason croaks, and Marvin narrows his eyes.

 

“We’ll talk later,” he says (Whizzer shivers). He skims the last page and shuts his bencher. “Can we still have dessert?”

 

“Yes,” Jason says, authoritatively, and Marvin rushes back into the kitchen to bring out tea, sugar, chocolate, and what looks like a box of foreign marshmallows.

 

“She asked me what I was looking for and I panicked,” Marvin says, potentially by way of explanation for the marshmallows. “I may have been in the wrong store.”

 

“You were definitely in the wrong store,” Jason says around a mouthful of marshmallow. Marvin frowns, and he shuts up, potentially thinking of Julie Johnson.

 

Whizzer, for his part, feels like he’s finally getting the hang of this. It’s almost exciting to be at ease in a situation where Marvin is decidedly less so. It’s like being at one of those formal dinner parties, except Marvin can’t easily drag him into a nearby closet at this angle. 

 

“After we eat dessert,” Marvin says, chewing warily on the edge of one of the not-marshmallows, “is there anything else?”

 

Jason shakes his head, and Whizzer is a bit disappointed.

 

“I’m going to read before bed,” Jason says. He pours some of the water out of the kettle and into his cup, which is a precarious enough operation that Whizzer tenses automatically. The teabag is less frightening. “We finally got to the interesting part in the Navi.”

 

“Oh, yeah?” Marvin finishes his marshmallow and goes for another one; Whizzer slides the box closer to him, along with his tea. He has no idea what a Navi is.

 

“Yeah, David just married Batsheva and now he’s trying to get rid of her husband,” Jason says. Marvin coughs very loudly and has to be pounded on the back by Whizzer.

 

“Tell us more, Jason,” Whizzer requests, now taking this as an excuse to rub Marvin’s back. Marvin tries to ask what they’re teaching Jason in that school, but is cut off by Whizzer hitting him on the back again.

 

“It’s really cool,” Jason says. “I thought it would be like Early Civilizations, but it’s a lot less boring. David had to get foreskins to become king. So far he’s tried getting Batsheva’s husband to go sleep with her, but he’s not falling for it.”

 

“Oh,” Whizzer says, not understanding any of this.

 

“Also, David has a ton of concubines,” Jason says, eyes wide. Whizzer wonders how this kid knows what a concubine is, and what that expression’s supposed to mean.

 

“Clearly Mendel was right about something,” Marvin says, finally opening the box of chocolates (the marshmallows have all mysteriously disappeared). There’s a brief moment of silence at the table while everybody considers the idea of Marvin agreeing with Mendel. “Well, not really.”

 

“Oh, thank God,” Whizzer says, sipping his tea. “That would have been awful.” Marvin elbows him-- “Hot liquid here! Watch it!”

 

“You’ll ruin your teeth,” Marvin says, pulling the box of chocolates away from Jason. “And finish your tea.”

 

“It’s all  _ fruity,”  _ Jason says, wrinkling his nose. 

 

“We only buy fruity teas,” Whizzer explains, which doesn’t help Jason’s expression. He supposes maybe it wasn’t helpful to bring up fruit at all, but that’s not his fault, is it? And Marvin is clearly awful at buying anything to do with food, so it was up to him, and if he’s going to drink tea he’s going to drink tea that tastes like tea. None of that watery tasteless garbage the Applebaums keep offering him.

 

Meanwhile, Jason has finished his tea and Marvin is collecting plates. 

 

“Try the orange next time, it’s less violent,” he says, and Jason nods.

 

“You said you  _ liked  _ this brand,” Whizzer says, and he injects as much petulance as possible because buying things that Marvin likes is a science more complicated than the moon landing.

 

“It’s not as bad as the other one,” Marvin says, and whisks away Whizzer’s cup. Whizzer frowns and sticks his head on his hands. Which one is ‘the  _ other  _ one’?

 

At any rate, it becomes irrelevant once everyone winds up in the guest room. Marvin insists on tucking Jason in (Jason insists on not calling it anything related to ‘tucking in’), and turning off all the lights because ‘strong light before sleep will give you nightmares’. He does this to Whizzer, too, actually, so it’s nice to see someone else suffer through it. Jason pulls out what looks like an unnaturally thick book and flicks it open to text so small Whizzer thinks it’s a termite infestation at first.

 

Marvin inclines his head door-wise, and Whizzer leaves; he shuts the door behind him, hearing Jason ask Marvin something and feeling indescribably odd. It seems he’s back to where he was this afternoon: confused, overdressed, and standing somewhere in the vicinity of his and Marvin’s bedroom. It means extra time to get ready for bed, anyway, so Whizzer gets started on that, thinking that maybe this will solve Marvin’s issue with how long it takes Whizzer to brush his teeth because One Minute Should Be Enough, or something similarly dumb.

 

Whizzer scrubs himself into a frenzy and reunites with Marvin in the next minute, finding him also rather ruffled.

 

“He wanted me to sing him  _ Shema,”  _ Marvin says, now apparently confident enough in Whizzer’s knowledge of Judaism to reference religious texts in their original Hebrew. And he’s right; Whizzer remembers that from his grandparents, too. The tune and the first words--  _ Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one... (blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever.)  _ The undertone, and the way he used to cover his eyes.

 

“What about it?” he asks, and Marvin shrugs.

 

“Is he going to keep doing this?” he asks, squeezing out the last of the toothpaste. Whizzer can feel a grocery run coming on.

 

“Would that be so bad?” he asks, and Marvin shrugs again, this time with his mouth full of toothpaste. Whizzer leaves him alone, then, wandering back through the apartment to their bed. It’s still unmade from their last blissful  _ We’re Two Grown Gay Men Who Live Together Again And Can Do Whatever The Hell We Want!!!  _ escapade, and Whizzer’s bedside table is still brandishing a book that he doesn’t enjoy reading at him. Marvin appears at the doorway by Whizzer’s side, and Whizzer jumps.

 

“I did some research,” Marvin says, but not in a library-appropriate tone of voice.

 

“I feel like you shouldn’t be grabbing my ass on Shabbat,” Whizzer says, as cooly as possible  _ (We’re Two Grown Gay Men, Etc.!),  _ and Marvin leans his head (with some tip-toeing) on Whizzer’s shoulder.

 

“That’s exactly what I was researching,” he says. “It is a commandment to have sex on the Sabbath.”

 

“No it isn’t,” Whizzer says, immediately, but Marvin hands him a tiny piece of paper scribbled over in microscopic print.

 

“It’s an exact transcription,” Marvin says, and Whizzer has to admit that it would be a bit demented to fake this in any level of specificity, so he reads.

 

_ How often are scholars to perform their marital duties? Rav Judah in the name of Samuel replied: “Every Friday night…” Judah the son of R. Hiyya and son-in-law of R. Jannai would spend all his time in the schoolhouse but every Sabbath eve he came home. _

 

Now Whizzer is fairly certain this isn’t forged, but he keeps reading anyway. 

 

_ [A man] shall not diminish [his  _ _ wife _ _ Whizzer’s] sustenance, [his] clothing, or [his] marital relations. (Exodus 21:1) _

 

“Okay, this is kind of cute,” Whizzer says, grinning at it. “But it looks pretty heavily edited.”

 

“Perhaps,” Marvin says, his chin digging slightly into Whizzer’s shoulder.

 

_ “Perhaps,”  _ Whizzer mimics, turning around to kiss him. “I like the part about clothes.”

 

“There are specific instructions on how often we should be having sex,” Marvin says, sort of blending his words into Whizzer’s mouth.

 

“Uh-huh?” Whizzer says, not really paying attention. 

 

“It depends on whether I’m a laborer,” Marvin says, biting Whizzer’s ear, “or a man of independence.”

 

“Uh-huh,” Whizzer says, clicking the door shut behind them and pulling Marvin gently to the bed.

 

“Either it’s twice a week,” Marvin says, fiddling with Whizzer’s shirt, “or every day. Respectively.”

 

“Uh-huh,” Whizzer says, and blinks as Marvin pushes him gently onto the bed. “Every  _ day?” _

 

“I think I labor,” Marvin says, pulling off his tie. “Reasonably so.”

 

“But you’re very independent,” Whizzer says, now more skeptical about this whole instructions thing than ever. 

 

“It’s not a limit,” Marvin says, kissing him again. “It’s a minimum. I think you should be satisfied with that.”

 

“We can talk about it later,” Whizzer says, pulling Marvin down into his lap, “...and not when your kid is in the other room.”

 

“We’ll be quiet,” Marvin whispers, and Whizzer rolls his eyes. “You should be happy I did this research for you.”

 

“The miracle of Judaism,” Whizzer quips, and then Marvin kisses him again and Whizzer decides to stay quiet. In the morning he’ll ask Jason... no, definitely not.

 

**

 

Jason yells at everyone a bit to relax the next day, but Whizzer hasn’t really lived a day of his adult life without relaxing (except for brief stints of time when he’s not being taken care of by a rotating pool of attractive men and he has to, like, get a  _ job _ ), so much of the yelling is, like most yelling in Marvin’s family, kind of pointless. Whizzer obeys anyway, stretching out on the couch with Jason’s  _ Judaism for Dummies  _ book. He sits his feet in Marvin’s lap, and Marvin whines about all the things he could be doing if Whizzer’s feet weren’t in his lap. Jason become engrossed by David and Batsheva, who are apparently plotting to get rid of Batsheva’s husband, or something. Whizzer tries to read about thousands of years of culture without falling asleep.

 

**

 

Sometime after seven Marvin finally moves to get the mess off the table. It’s been sort of hanging out, looking more and more weird as the day passes and last night’s dessert course gets farther and farther away, and Whizzer has been pointedly sending glances towards both it and Marvin, so it looks like he’s either finally gotten the hint or just finally decided to take it. Jason goes to sit on the couch with Whizzer and looks up at him.

 

“Evening, kiddo,” Whizzer says. Jason nods, and Whizzer nods back. “Anything more on the agenda?”

 

“Havdalah,” Jason says, and before Whizzer can work out what that is Jason’s dragged him over to the table, which has at least been stripped closer to the tablecloth; Whizzer takes pity on Marvin and removes the plate they put the challah on. Jason, meanwhile, goes rooting through cupboards and pulls out one of those candles with too many wicks that Marvin was getting so hyped over.

 

“I’ll say Havdalah,” Jason says authoritatively, and Whizzer thinks that after last night this is pretty fair. “I need somebody to hold a candle.”

 

“I’ll do it,” Marvin says, returning from the overflowing sink. “Which one?” Jason hands him a tall thing with a reddish sort of hue to it, and he holds the thing directly in front of him.

 

“It should be higher than that,” Jason says, and Marvin holds it closer to his shoulder. “Okay. Do we have spices?”

 

“No,” Whizzer says, based on last night’s dinner. True, that’s a little unfair, so he goes and finds some garlic in what is technically the spice cabinet but more often becomes the Marvin-thought-he’d-find-a-snack-in-there-but-of-course-he-didn’t-because-why-would-he?-so-he-just-left-the-door-open-like-the-jerk-he-is cabinet. “I mean, does this count?”

 

“Sure,” Jason says. He does his overfilling thing with the kiddush cup and holds it up. “Okay. Here we go.”

 

_ Behold, God is my salvation; I shall trust and not be afraid... _

 

There’s a blessing to which Marvin and Whizzer both say amen.

 

“Do I need a free hand for this?” Marvin asks, looking at his candle, and Jason frowns and shakes his head. The candle drips persistently on the tea candles nobody cleaned up under it, and onto the foil around them.

 

“That was just for me drinking the wine,” he says, and launches into another blessing. This time he smells the garlic and passes it to Whizzer. Whizzer holds it. “You’re supposed to  _ smell it,  _ Whizzer!”

 

“Alright, alright!” Whizzer smells it. It smells like garlic. He holds it somewhere between Marvin’s nose and the candle, which is an amount of space that does not encourage confidence. Jason says another blessing, and then sticks his hand a good deal closer to the candle. “Fire burns, kiddo--”

 

“You’re supposed to  _ look at the light,”  _ Jason says, doing that. Actually, he just stares at the shadows on his fingers. Whizzer stretches out a hand to do the same; Marvin just stares directly into the candle. Jason rattles off a blessing so long Whizzer almost doesn’t notice when it becomes another blessing, and then he drinks a bit from the kiddush cup and gestures for Marvin to come closer with the candle. Then he looks around and says, “Whizzer, can you get me a paper bowl?”

 

“Look, Jason, I really don’t want to start a fire,” Whizzer says, but he gets the bowl, and Jason absolutely drowns the candle over it. Marvin holds blessedly still for the process.

 

“And we’re done,” Jason says, taking the candle from Marvin. Marvin finds the nearest chair possible and collapses into it, putting one hand over his eyes.

 

“Did you have fun, Jason?” Whizzer asks, pointedly ignoring Marvin. 

 

“Yeah,” Jason says, “but it was a lot of hard work, too. And I still don’t really know how to read Hebrew.”

 

“We can work on it,” Whizzer says, and the doorbell rings. He goes to answer it, and Trina does that thing where she hurries past him to make sure Jason hasn’t just become one with the apartment. On this occasion, she also does a sort of sweep across the place, visually, and Whizzer can tell she’s taking in the assortment of mess they made.

 

“We had Shabbat,” Jason tells her.

 

“Yes, I can see that...” She herds Jason in the general direction of his suitcase and turns to Marvin, who is still recuperating. “Round tables.”

 

“Square tables,” he mumbles without looking up.

 

She sniffs and walks back to Whizzer.

 

“Thank you for having him,” she says, potentially genuinely, except it’s not like she has a significant amount of options other than leaving Jason here for the weekend.

 

“No problem,” Whizzer says, also potentially genuinely, it’s not like he has a significant amount of options other than having Jason here for the weekend. “Maybe we can even do Shabbat again another time.”

 

Marvin makes a loud groaning noise in the background.

 

“He’s rested,” Whizzer tells Trina. She raises an eyebrow.

 

“See? He’s never going to do it again,” Jason says, scrunching up his nose. Whizzer casts an eye to Marvin and bends closer to Jason.

 

“He’ll do it again,” he whispers, and Jason grins and takes hold of his suitcase. “See you next week.”


End file.
